Social media, text chains helped anti-ICE protesters get the word out during Minneapolis raid

As word spread Tuesday about a large law enforcement presence involving immigration officers in south Minneapolis, a crowd of around 200 residents flooded the area.

City council members and activists drew attention to the scene on social media. Organizers tapped networks of trained legal observers. Concerned neighbors walked down the block with phones in hand.

Organizers and their allies believe the use of social media and text message networks is the best defense for keeping immigrant communities safe.

But at the scene on E. Lake Street, tension quickly escalated between the large crowd and several dozen federal agents who arrived in military-style fatigues, face coverings, rifles and armored vehicles, and some local officials later criticized colleagues for spreading unverified information.

Miguel Hernandez, a spokesman for the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAC), said that ICE agents “seem to be showing up like cowboys and we don’t know what they’re capable of. Ultimately, they are there to enforce immigration laws that we see as unfit and inhumane.”

In the days since the Minneapolis raid, Mayor Jacob Frey, Police Chief Brian O’Hara and other local and federal agencies have clarified that the operation did not center on immigration, despite the involvement of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They said it was instead part of a large investigation into drug and human trafficking, and that police were present for crowd control only.

As President Donald Trump’s administration aggressively pursues deportations, immigrant rights groups have organized and trained public documenters to respond to ICE raids to note the actions of federal agents, share credible information and ensure nobody’s rights are violated. Often, news is shared on text chains. And new websites and apps such as SignalSafe and People Over Papers have also sought to map ICE’s activities through crowdsourcing suspected sightings.

Upon hearing of ICE’s presence outside a restaurant at the intersection of Bloomington Avenue and E. Lake Street on Tuesday, MIRAC leaders pinged a roster of trained observers through social media and text chains, with as many as 20 showing up on the scene, Hernandez said. That roster was complied from a dozen or so trainings in recent years that involved several hundred people.

Together, the observers counted more than 40 federal agents from an array of agencies, a description that was later posted to social media. They noted two armored vehicles, a long-range acoustic device and the deployment of chemical munitions and pepper balls.

Yayu Feng, a professor of emerging media at the University of St. Thomas, said Tuesday’s fast and large response to the law enforcement operation was not something she had seen before, locally or nationally. She said it was a reflection of communities learning to strategize and protect themselves.

Frey and O’Hara were both critical of some officials who shared news of the raid on social media, saying posts helped spread misinformation.

But social media has become a valuable tool for activists across the country, Feng said. “I think for some people, this is the only powerful tool they have to do something of this scale,” she said. “I think it’s still valuable for those people to get their voice heard because a lot of times they’re doing this because they feel like they’re not heard on a lot of mainstream media.”

City Council Member Jason Chavez, who represents the area where Tuesday’s raid took place and posted about it on social media, rejected the idea that the size of the crowd contributed to an escalation of tensions with officers.

He said law enforcement’s arrival in a militarized fashion with face coverings and rifles at a time when deportations are happening with little or no due process elicited a fear from the public.

“We have to show up for our community and make sure things are OK,” he said.